Primum Non Nocere
by Endgegner07
Summary: “I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near in periods of idleness” - The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarte. Rated T because of references made to drugs. Nonslash and yes, another author writing about this. Finally complete.
1. Chapter 1

_The idea has been floating around in my mind for some years, as far back as 2006 when I first started to write Sherlock Holmes fanfiction. I didn't use the idea because of my own lack of interest (laziness) to do research and for some other reasons. Recently, a lot of great authors have written about this topic. I credit you all, because you - by writing these stories – encouraged me (even if only indirectly) to try my hand at it. I hope you're not getting tired of these kinds of story. Any similarities with other fanfiction are unintentional. I apologise in advance._

_ACD created them, I'm just borrowing._

_Originally inspired by a quote in "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarte"._

* * *

I had spend the day on the settee. The cocaine bottle and the syringe were under the pillow my head was resting on.

The whole room was silent. I almost believed to be the only being on the planet, leading a solitary and meaningless existence. Dust was floating above and around me, periodically illuminated by the few shafts of sunlight that managed to escape the cover of clouds. It was a cold day.

I was in my nightshirt and dressing gown. There had been no interesting case for three weeks and I took no interest in the few letters that requested my aid. And I probably used more cocaine than was usual, even for me.

I had been careful not to be caught outright by Watson. The doctor had attempted to wean me from the habit. And I let him believe he had succeeded.

That day, I had already indulged in the stimulant several times. Thus, I did not notice the door to the living room had opened until my flatmate was in the room, looking for his walking stick, which I had taken the night before.

I had examined the stick for some reason. I couldn't remember what I had wanted with it.

My eyes took in his appearance, a slight limp and overall stiff demeanour. The weather would worsen, it was written into Watson's countenance.

Watson did not address me and walked as quietly as he was able to around the room. He made an effort to avoid a snide remark directed at him. He knew my moods well. I knew - in some distant corner of my mind - that it wouldn't do for him to find out that my behaviour was (partly) caused by the drug.

I do not know why, maybe the cocaine lulled me into a false sense of security - invulnerability even. At that moment I was certain that none of Watson's disappointment, sadness or anger would be able to reach or affect me.

Looking back on that day, I am almost unable to believe how the cocaine was able to compel me to say what I did. Any and all confrontation with Watson, when I was under its influence, were undesirable. I regret it now, but the drug sent me headlong into one of these confrontations.

Watson was about to leave, he had picked up his walking stick from behind the settee. He walked towards the door and quietly informed me he was going out to get some more supplies for his medical bag and some other things he needed.

"While you are at it, Watson, would you get me some more of this?"

Already halfway between my resting place and the door, Watson shot me a quick glance from over his shoulder.

"Get you more of what, Holmes? Have you run out of tobacco already?"

"No. As you can see I have plenty left," I rather languidly pointed towards the Persian slipper on the small table beside me, tobacco all over its surface and some of it on the floor. I did not see where the pipe was. Probably under the settee.

I reached underneath my pillow and held up the phial. It must have been madness. Never have I seen Watson pale in such a short amount of time, unless his shoulder was causing him agony. His blue gaze became frigid, enraged. He was a man of deep feelings, but usually very much able to control the more violent ones. Watson was even more stoic than one would believe having read his stories in the Strand magazine.

"Get you more? You are asking me to _get you more?_" The last three words were marked by a quiet incredulity.

At the time, I did not care had he shouted them.

"You have a talent to state the obvious, Doctor," was my reply, infused with the right amount of mockery. It were words like these which made him accuse me of being no more than a cold and calculating thinking machine. The security the drug offered me (which was no security at all I now know) made me provoke him.

Watson was steadily looking at me. I challenged him to say more, holding his gaze.

He did not disappoint me.

"I told you what it would do to you. What it _will_ do to you if you continue to take it. You told me you had discarded it."

I ignored him, for this speech I knew by heart. Or I appeared to, needling him with my ignorance.

"You do not understand what harm it will do to you, to your mind and body," he continued, his voice still quiet, but ringing clear in the stillness of the room. It was emotionless.

I barely registered that he was behaving quite unlike himself. Usually, he would raise his voice, gesture animatedly and argue against my 'abuse' of cocaine as if the most important thing to him in the world was that I abandon the drug.

It was and it is and I refused to acknowledge it.

"I must take it or my mind will tear itself apart and do spare me another lecture upon the subject, if you please. They are neither welcomed nor successful," I scolded him rather waspishly.

"You _must_ take it…" Watson's voice trailed off into silence, repeating some of my words. His eyes held an emotion I did not recognise and am reluctant to, even now. I do not believe they were fixed upon me but rather upon the bottle I still held in my hand.

He did not continue to speak.

Finally somewhat worried, I leaned up on one elbow.

"How can you ask me to _get you more_ of this?" he suddenly demanded. Watson still did not look at me. I grew annoyed with him.

"It does not matter, I shall get more of it either wa-"

The bang of the closing door interruped me. I had not noticed how Watson had slowly moved nearer to the door until he had shut it in this rather violent manner.

I did not go after him. As his friend and the one who gave offense, I should have. In that moment, I judged following him as being overtly emotional.

The cocaine repressed any concerns that remained, it was stronger than my conscience which insisted that I listen to Watson, to his warnings.

Of course I knew about the damage. How could I not, having shared the rooms with a man that disapproved so strongly of the drug?

In my arrogance, I was sure that I would prove stronger than any addiction I may have developed. My body was merely an appendix. Watson was exaggerating the ramifications.

_You have never been the worse for it_, my mind whispered.

He could lecture me as much as he wanted to. Upon what did he base some of his claims, some consequences of taking cocaine which were not even described in the few articles about the drug that were either publicly available or in his medical texts?

I should have known Watson never made unjustified claims. Never had. He had always been able to justify his actions and words. And on matters of medical nature he certainly had more experience than I.

I regret to say, more than I expected.


	2. Chapter 2

_I apologise if one or both of them seem OOC. That is either due to major failing to write them IC on my part, but I think it could be because of Holmes' more than usual taking of cocaine and Watson's being pushed to the limit. Please don't stone this poor author._

* * *

Watson did not return that evening. To this day I haven't found out where he spend the night and I did not ask. Even so, I suspected that he  
was at his club or at an acquaintance of his. He always has been a well liked and respected man and I doubt someone would find a reason to deny him a place to stay at.

Mrs. Hudson was quite beside herself with worry, going so far as to venture up into the sitting room when I was in 'one of my moods'. Her attempts to 'talk some sense into' me were of no avail. Under the influence of the drug, unfortunately, everything becomes secondary. Even those things which must not - the person that must not and should not have to be secondary to an 'artificial stimulant', and I usually had enough sense to realise that. But not on that day it seemed.

I pray that it won't happen again. Every man's patience has a limit, even Watson's seemingly inexhaustible capacity to forgive my shortcomings. But I am getting ahead of myself.

As the next day was approaching and the effects of my multiple cocaine injections receding, the full extend of my maltreatment of my friend's amiable nature became painfully clear to me.

It is not often that I feel anything as strong as guilt but I am fairly certain that the unpleasant feeling within me on that morning was just that.

What had I been thinking, asking him to get me cocaine? From his viewpoint, I could have asked him to commit a hideous crime against me. No, from his viewpoint I probably did do just that.

Watson hated the drug with more passion than anyone I have met. I was uncertain whether it had more to do with the drug itself or the fact that a friend was taking it. He seldom outright spoke of his disapproval and the occasions on which he did voice them are recorded in the Strand.

It was more likely of him to hint at his continued deep loathing of cocaine. I deduced it from his expression or stiff set of both shoulders, general tenseness and, when we were in the same room for a longer period of time, multiple glances into my general direction. Watson would rather have me deduce it and thus employing my mind, maybe even hoping that this minor act of deduction would bring me out of my depression and stop me using a stimulant instead.

After the last time he attempted to talk me into giving it up, I let him believe he was triumphant. His reasoning had been delivered in quite sharp and graphic descriptions of various adverse effects that would befall me in time. They never had (or only to a much lesser extent than he described), so I had discarded his words as I had so often before.

Watson returned mid-morning. I again was on the couch, smoking my pipe. I had shaved and dressed, putting on my older dressing gown. The empty syringe and phial were still located beneath the pillow. I had not taken the drug that day.

I heard his tread on the stairs, he was limping more than usual. The weather had taken a turn for the worse as I had predicted. It was drizzling.

The good doctor continued up the stairs into his bedroom and did not emerge until it was almost time for lunch. I doubted that Mrs. Hudson was in an accommodating mood, but she would overcome her ire the instant Watson would ask her for a meal. Not that I cared for one.

He sat himself at the table. I was busying myself with notes on some chemical experiments I had done. Especially the ones with dissatisfying results, trying to find faults. Watson was looking at me, his gaze almost searing into the side of my skull. I repressed the illogical urge to touch that exact spot, wishing to shield it.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Watson also opening one of his journals, one I haven't seen before. It seemed to be quite a bit older than the ones he usually wrote into and he was not writing into it, merely reading. I knew most of them by sight. He was just as proficient in leaving his journals lying around.

The clock chimed. Watson was disturbing the silence, asking if I wanted lunch. His attitude riled me, probably because he had left me alone to deal with our landlady, who had been impossible the night before. My feelings of remorse seemed to have disappeared with his return to our rooms.

"You should know better than to ask me to eat when my mind is idle."

He turned quite suddenly to me, ears flushing red, the same blue fire in his eyes as the day before. It was unsettling me. I was feeling more emotions than I was comfortable with, the quick changing of their nature adding to my disquiet.

"Maybe your liquid _stimulant_will help your mind along in the deduction that another day without nourishment will result in more harm than you are inclined to realise. Or maybe it is the reason for not realising this basic fact," it was a statement, not a question.

"You entirely disregard the benefits of cocaine."

That statement seemed to shock Watson into silence, because he opened his mouth and was at first unable to speak one single word. Under different circumstances it would have been amusing.

"The _benefits?_" Watson was barely whispering. Once again the tone in which his words were uttered escaped me.

"There are no benefits when one abuses the drug like you are doing!"

"Do keep your temper, Doctor. I do not doubt that you know about the benefits of the drug, from a medical viewpoint at least. It is not as if you had any previous personal experience on the – so called – abuse of it," I was not aware that he had, in any case.

Silence met my words. I was expecting him to agree with my 'deduction', expecting him to regard the issue from an objective point of view. I wanted to force him to agree with me, because I never had been able to before.

My confidence diminished appallingly sudden when more than a minute of almost absolute silence went by. No doubt I shall appear as melodramatic as any female character in Watson's abominable yellow backed novels. But I felt panic rise within me, trying to think of any logical reason for Watson's continued silence. My mind was racing, I was blanching at the possible implications of his muteness.

Maybe there still was a trace of cocaine left in my veins after all. How else to explain my inner upheaval?

"Please tell me you haven't-" my voice was as quiet as his had been, barely audible. I did not dare finish my thought.

A bitter laugh rose in Watson's throat. Never had I seen him in this state. Maybe I was getting a taste of my 'own medicine' so to speak - I was quickly getting tired of that word - experiencing what Watson did when I behaved abnormally (which was, according to his scribblings, not uncommon). And I did not like it. He was supposed to be the stalwart one in this partnership.

His voice brought me back from the depths of my swirling mind.


	3. Chapter 3

_Don't consider this serious canon, because I can't guarantee this chapter fits into it and I'm not 100% sure about some facts. Cocaine was used to treat morphine addictions as early as 1879, so this should about fit into this time-frame (considering Watson kept up on medical advances, especially since morphine was the primal pain killer used in the army and addictions not that unusual. Cocaine would have seemed to be a welcome aid to cure it. At least in my fic, when the dangers of cocaine were not well known or suspected). I don't know how fast news traveled at that time, but I think by early 1880 there might have been the tiny possibility of Watson having heard about it. Just bear with me and imagine it was possible back then. Also, I do not know if they would have had a supply of cocaine. Let's just pretend they had in this story._

* * *

"No, I haven't taken it," Watson said and I felt myself going limp with relief. But it was short-lived, because there still had to be something that had caused his hate for the drug.

As always, when matters of a more personal nature were about to be discussed, I felt myself growing somewhat uncomfortable. Watson could be as reticent as I about his past and was so, unless I asked. I had made it a habit to not pry into the life he led before we met in early 1881, because I did not wish to awaken the ghosts that still lingered inside his mind, remnants of the horrors he had seen in the Afghan war.

I never pried unless I needed the information, and even then I avoided speaking of the war. All that I knew I either had to know, or he had volunteered the information on his own.

Making deductions while lacking the necessary data is something I refuse to do whenever I can. That day, my ability to deduce apparently developed a life of its own, doing what I tried to avoid.

Watson could only have come into (almost daily) contact with drugs during his time in the eastern colonies, when he was an assistant surgeon in her Majesty's army.

And it was a wretched time for him.

If he had not taken cocaine, then it must have been someone he knew and relatively well at that.

"You knew someone, other than me, who abused the drug. In the East. A patient?"

My mouth also seemed to have developed a mind of his own. If not for anything else - I decided rather sourly - I would quit the drug for some time, simply to regain control of my emotions and vital parts of my body, especially my mouth.

"Yes, I knew someone who abused the drug," the words came out as a weary sigh. Watson seemed to have had a restless night, wherever he had stayed.

The remorse I felt earlier returned.

"Why do you think I joined the army?" he prompted me. The seeming randomness of the question surprised me again. I do not give him enough credit.

"Your question implies the reasons are either self-evident or the exact opposite. Knowing your nature," though I was beginning to doubt whether I had ever known him as well as I thought, "it was out of a sense of adventure as well as difficulties to produce the sum of money you would have needed to purchase a practice." He gave me a barely noticeable smile for my efforts.

"My family was not poor, but neither were we what one may call rich. My father had been willing, after I had finished with my degree at London University, to loan me a part of the money I would have needed to buy into a practice."

"Why did you not?" I frowned. His father had died during his time as army surgeon.

Another sigh escaped him.

"I had a childhood friend. The only one I still held contact with after I decided to study to become a doctor. We regularly wrote to each other and he had plans to join the army. It seemed like a grand opportunity to see the world at the time, before I _did _buy a practice. You are right, ultimately it was out of a sense of adventure. I took the surgeon's course at Netley, as you know. We joined the same regiment."

Watson's eyes were fixed at some point above my head, fingers tracing the pages of the worn journal.

"We were separated early. He was transferred. I stayed in our original regiment-"

"The Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers," I didn't realise I had interrupted him at first. He looked at me. "Yes. We did not see each other until some time later."

Where they had seen each other again was apparent and Watson voiced my thoughts a second later.

"As you know, I was ordered to join the Royal Berkshires," _doomed to join them would be more accurate_, a voice whispered inside my head.

"My friend also joined them, a bit later," Watson's voice was almost monotonous, face inanimate. He seemed lost, either in the past or in some place within him which the past and the horrors he had endured couldn't reach him.

As I had stated, rarely, if never, had he spoken about his time in Afghanistan. I was unwilling to end his monologue now, morbidly curious if my suspicions would prove to be true.

I tried to make my voice gentle, knowing he would suffer more restless nights due to his recollections. "What happened when he had joined your regiment?"

The doctor shook his head, maybe wishing to shake off the past, maybe in defeat.

"I was glad to see him again, even in that damnable place. He seemed to be sound enough at first, he had been wounded in a skirmish some time previously. He assured me he had made a full recovery."

"But he was not as healthy as he let on?" I asked and again Watson shook his head. Not saying anything at first, he gave me a look that chilled me.

"I noticed that he was addicted to morphine after a couple of days. I had noticed the symptoms. Addiction to morphine was not as uncommon as one would like to believe."

There I had his previous personal experience with the abuse of a drug. I myself had stopped taking any morphine, as he well knew and I was about to remind him of that fact, not seeing how this event was to be connected to my usage of cocaine. I had already opened my mouth to tell him just that, when he held up his hand, anticipating my response.

"I had read something about cocaine being used as a cure for morphine addictions," he said.

"It was a very new treatment. I spoke to my immediate superior and we attempted to wean him off it with the aid of some of our cocaine supplies."

Watson trailed off again, seemingly lost in his memories. I shifted into a more comfortable position on the settee. I suspected neither of us would have any lunch that day. He sat up somewhat straighter.

"We believed to have been successful, my friend's health seemed to have improved considerably. He was energetic, seldom tired any more. But I noticed some changes in his nature soon after," he avoided looking at me, eyes wandering around the room, settling on the floor, the table, the mantle.

I knew it, I felt it in my blood that we were coming to the – undoubtedly tragic – crux of the matter. And so I spoke, wishing to spare him somehow.

"He became a cocaine addict, didn't he?" I asked and Watson nodded. I had noticed that Watson had not yet mentioned his friends name, either unconsciously or on purpose. Either way, the name was of no importance to me right then and maybe Watson knew this.

"He was also rather intelligent, Holmes," it was the first time that he addressed me directly since he had begun to speak of these events. "Possessing an amiable character. Brave, honest. He was a good friend."

I tried to imagine this friend, he sounded much like Watson. That they should had become and stayed friends was, to me, elementary.

"I thought it was some sort of battle fatigue, at first. He became moody, aggressive, but always apologised, blaming his nerves, the tension that had seized every one of us in that terrible place. Why should I have doubted him? I thought I knew him," the doctor was blaming himself for whatever had happened.

The loss of his innate calm the day before was a surprise no more. I was ashamed for doubting the reasons he had to loathe the cocaine.

That he never had mentioned any friends after his return to England, only some acquaintances, also was no surprise. Most of the friends he would have made in the East would have perished in the Battle of Maiwand.

For my sake and his, terrible as it may sound, I hoped that his childhood friend had died in the battle, not from an overdose of cocaine.

Watson, ever good at reading my thoughts when the mood was upon him, shattered that hope.

His blue eyes were gauging every change in my expression, every slight movement I made. I wondered, did my clients feel this way when I observed them?

I could hear the ticking of the clock. My sense of time had disappeared while I had been listening to him.

"It killed him."

What 'it' was, I did not need to ask and the statement hit me harder than any blow I had suffered in the boxing ring.

"His comrades found him dead. Heart failure as we found out later."

The blow must have been infinitely worse for Watson. Even more reason why he had returned a broken man to England.

"When was this?" I dared to ask.

"May, 16th 1880," a mere two months before that terrible battle. "They also found his supply of cocaine. How he was able to get it, when our resources were controlled, I do not know. We never used cocaine much. At first, they suspected that I had provided him with more of it."

I was staring at him, appalled that someone would even consider this.

But was I any better than they were?

_"While you are at it, Watson, would you get me some more of this?" The phial was glinting, reflecting the light in a myriad of colours. The liquid inside it almost gone. The hand holding the phial seemed to be almost as transparent, blue veins on the inside of the wrist clearly visible, crawling up the thin arm, disappearing inside the wide sleeve of a purple dressing gown._

My words came back to haunt me.

The parallels were frightening.


	4. Chapter 4

_Right, I know it's been an appallingly long time since I last updated the story and I can only sincerely apologise and hope someone will still be reading this last chapter. I strive to finish everything I started no matter how uncooperative the muse or how lazy this author is. So I browbeat my muse into shape, no matter how much it screamed in protest. Thank you for sticking with me! All mistakes are mine, please forgive me.  
_

_

* * *

  
_

So great was my momentary torment that I felt quite sick to my stomach. I strove to surpress this weakness and keep my contol intact.

I could read Watson's selfloathing in the set of his jaw, could imagine it burning in the eyes that avoided looking at me.

He sat hunched, almost cramped and looked at the carpet while the minutes were ticking away in the silence between us.

"Primum non nocere."

It was delivered in a heartbroken, selfmocking tone so unlike the Watson I knew – or thought to have known. I was fast realising that I knew next to nothing. And I prided myself with my ability to know.

I never realised that Watson had such deep demons to haunt him. We silently came to the mutual consent to never talk about Afghanistan unless it was absolutely unavoidable.

I hated the feeling, this sinking feeling in my stomach, the shame to be unable to help one who was more than worthy of my help – one whom I owed any help I could give.

The guilt was like a steelband around my chest and I wanted it to end.

"First do no harm," I was surprised that I had broken the silence.

Watson's smile was full of bitter irony and I wished to never see its like again on his face. He lifted his head to look at me. His eyes were empty but for the almost hidden agony.

"My only friend and I did him harm," he said. I did not know whether he was talking about the past or the present and instead decided to adress the facts he had laid before me. If only to assuage my guilt and my conscience.

_And afterwards to never have to think of it again…_

"It was his choice, Watson, you couldn't have done anything," and I knew the moment the words left my mouth that I had said the wrong thing. Knew how he would interpret the words.

"I didn't even try!" Watson voice was loud and harsh, so unlike his gentle nature. "I didn't know what it would do, fool that I was! I wished to ease his suffering, even if it was self inflicted! I was a fool," he had risen from the chair in his agitation even though his last words were a mere anguished whisper.

"I have been a fool," he repeated. "It cost me dearly."

He turned away, leaning on mantle, shoulders slumped in defeat. And I only looked on in boorish incompetence. I had not felt this foolish since my brother last demonstrated his superiority.

"I swore to myself that I would never let it happen again. And coward that I am-"

I interrupted him.

"You are not a coward!" I was getting angry at being forced into such personal conversation, even if the situation was of my own making and I also was unsettled by a Watson I had never met before. But I would not let anyone slander his character, not even himself for he was too honourable a man even if I never told him that.

"I am! I am letting it happening again," Watson hissed, pounding a fist unto to mantle in his anger. "I could as well hold my revolver to your head and pull the trigger, the outcome will be same," his voice was choked, breaking at the end.

Before I knew it, I had him by the shoulders and spun him around to face me. I have had enough of the self pity, because he had done nothing to pity himself about. He tried to wean me off the cocaine and I had betrayed his trust and for reasons that I was reluctant to examine it disturbed me that his selfblame reached that far into his being.

"It is not the same and neither will it be same, I never took a dangerous dosage," I shook him lightly by the shoulders, trying to break this mood that had control over my friend. But it seemed that it was not to be.

"Your _consumption_," he spoke the word as if it was a curse, "increased over the last three weeks alone," how he knew that I did not know, as he was so enraged earlier having found out I still took it.

"You have no interest in the cases that come your way," he continued. "Why? Are you really not interested or is _it_," - what "it" was was perfectly, painfully obvious - "becoming more important than your 'little problems'?"

Never had I suspected that so much spite existed in my friend. And never aimed at myself. My mind was by then completely free of the last remains of the cocain dosage I had taken. More than ever I saw what the strain that has been building for over a decade had done to him.

What kind of detective - what kind of _friend_ – was I to not realise, to not notice? Without the cocaine in my blood my conscience was rearing its ugly head. What about the detachment I worked so hard to archieve and maintain?

It was the first time since Reichenbach and shocking Watson into unconsciousness on my return that I felt this chaos of emotions. It was unsettling.

Was it true that Watson was the only thing - with his constant prodding and arguing, putting our friendship and partnership in jeopardy - that kept me from taking even more of the drug?

_Yes, it is, _my conscience insisted, while something darker insisted upon the opposite.

If you so pride yourself upon your intellect, your independence, why then can you not prove yourself stronger, can you not prove that there are other means to combat boredom and idleness?

Watson was obviously quite beside himself, shocked at what he had just said and tried to turn away. I did not let him and tried to not be angry at his accusation because I had to acknowledge that there was some truth to his words, that from his standpoint it had been the logical, the only thing to say.

He looked shamefaced, not meeting my eyes, his ears flaming. I tightened my grip on his shoulders, walked him backwards and pushed him into his chair. I dragged my chair to sit in front of him, ready to wait in silence until he looked my way.

My accursed mind went back to the times I took the drug (I had stopped taking morphine a long while ago, making the cocaine solution the worst of my few vices as Watson insisted).

I remembered something Watson said to me, many years back.

_But consider! Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue change, and may at least leave a permanent weakness._

I wondered if this was true, if I had become weak. I did not think that I was but my friend saw it was a dangerous weakness. Never had I been able to convince him of the necessity, of the opposite, that I needed it to stimulate my mind. But at the same time, Watson was the most honest of men and had never lied to me about that which was important to him. Doubtlessly he believed to speak the truth, even though cocaine had been used by many men of fame before and its merrits as stimulant and aneasthetic were praised.

I knew Watson avoided using it on his patients and scoffed at its use as stimulant.

Maybe this whole situation had been unavoidable. There is an arabic proverb I had heard Watson use, one he had heard during his service in the east. Or was it in one of Dicken's novels?

_T__he last straw breaks the laden camel's back._

Today, undoubtly Watson's breaking point had been reached. I was deeply unsettled that _I_ was his breaking point, even though I should have know better by how he reacted after I had deceived him in 1891. I was his weak point and his friendship with me was mine.

And was not the cocaine also a point of weekness?

A consulting detective could not allow himself to have any weaknesses. Or as few as possible. And I could not lose Watson either.

Talking about this, no matter how daunting the prospect, would be necessary if I wanted to keep our friendship intact. It was already dangerously strained. I was loathe to discuss the issue. The repeated emotional upheavel such a conversaion would entail I despised, but the talk was more important.

I remembered that once, in the early day of our associaion when this friendship had been something novel, almost nobel, not to be risked (I had never admitted as much to Watson).

Had I really forgotten this fact? Become too secure, taking him for granted (for if he could forgive me for my betrayal in 1891, for deceiving him about my death, he could surely forgive this petty habit?) and as such done Watson more harm than I realised?

Harm to myself and to my _only_ friend?

An unpleasant realisation. No, that would be an understatement.

Surely I ould prove mylelf stonger than this habit. I realised that it now was a matter of personal honour (even proving myself stronger than Watson's -so called - friend who caused him so very much grief during that terrible campain).

"No, it has not," my tone seemed to surprise Watson, as it lacked any heat or anger. His eyebrows rose a fraction above his disbelieving eyes. My voice was without the argumentative tone our conversation had just moments ago. I was exhausted, deflated yet energised. An interesting paradoxon.

A smirk came unbidden to my face, turned into a quick smile. My poor friend seemed to be completely thrown off-guard. It would take some time to see if I could prove myself stronger than the drug. It was also going to be a very unpleasant experience, should I succeed. Once I had read in Watson's medical journals about the sympthoms of withdrawl and from what I remembered – no matter how light he sympthoms sometimes may be - it had by no means sounded appealing.

But if it was so, I had only myself to blame and I found that I did wish to spare Watson any additional grief. He had really lived through much more than any man ought to.

You would have broken long ago.

And cracks were already beginning to show in the man sitting opposite me.

"Another case has just presented itself and is waiting to be solved by me."

"By you?"

"Quite."

I could tell that he wasn't pleased with the change in subject. I went back to the settee and reached under the pillow, where the syringe and bottle still lay.

Both in hand I returned to stand before Watson, holding out the needle and the bottle, one item in each hand. His eyes were flickering to each hand, then he looked into my eyes for a long moment, before he reached out to take them from me.

"Yes," I said. "Another case, a vital one."

I knew that Watson did not dare to hope. Another smile would not be suppressed and Watson's lips reluctantly twitched in return.

I turned to go into my room to dress properly when he spoke.

"Do you have hopes of succeeding in this case?"

I could hear his hesitation and his fatigue. I somehow knew that this would be his last attempt to help me conquer the cocaine.

Two emotions I rarely felt spread in my chest. Hope. And compassion for the man I called my dearest, my only friend.

I turned and spoke with every ounce of conviction inside of me.

"I wish to."

Fin.


End file.
